mrtimdillenbeck

Disclaimer: The following is an emotional rant, written upon first discovering the new 'bare-bones' interface, so simple as to border on dysfunctional. My ravings are to be in no way construed as breaking up my love affair with VIPTV. I've been loyal since 2007 and will ever remain so. It's a fleeting moment, a lover's spat. Humor me, please. So, without further delay, I give you my rant:

   This is an upgrade? The site is now nearly unusable, with no access to forums or "list of 50" most recent shows. Without such a list, without numerical season/episode tags, I now have no way to keep up with all the new shows just put up on the site, or even know which are new series. Unless I check daily, I will have lost the multiple-days continuity that 'last 50' list gave me. If an entire season is released all at once, as Netflix now does, I'll likely miss the notice and not discover it unless I navigate these incomprehensible menu structures looking for names I don't even  know exist. The season/episode tags (i.e. 01x01) were the only way to identify new series, and the  50-list consolidated 3-5 days schedule in one place.

   Damn, I wish you had given us the courtesy of warning us of these changes before throwing us into such confusion without even a user orientation guide. I can't believe a site would introduce such a monstrous, disorienting trashing of their pages without prior notice. I can only pray that our user accounts are still logging episodes to our viewing lists. 

   The content may still be here, somewhere, but your interface stinks, and is beyond navigating. And to do it in the middle of the networks' new show roll out schedule is damn poor timing. Why did you abandon a perfectly functional interface for this crap. And, by-the-way, a white background fairly screams at your eyes. White on black has much more class, and suits a theatre-like experience.These pages have lost all your former polish & class and now look and feel amateurish. Is this a school project, a beginner's first try? Because aesthetically and functionally it certainly looks like it. I don't know who talked you into this. Or did the site change owners?

   I am completely disoriented, and I'm likely not the only one. How can I recommend VIPTV to friends if they can't navigate the interface, and there is no user guide to explain it. No user guide!

   Your 10 year anniversary is a bust. Explain yourself, please, or roll this unattractive mess back before you lose your audience. You've already lost your convenience. This is not an "improvement".

   Oh, and a 300 character limit on messages is yet another insult.

   If catering to mobile platforms is your goal, then all of us who prefer big screens are s--t outta luck, I guess. Your previous, beloved UI was sleek, functional, intuitive, refined, beautiful and professional. For the laptop or desktop user, that mobile app look you now have sucks on the big screen.

   ONE MORE, IMPORTANT, THING: The timeline/toolbar at the bottom of the screen has lost its 'auto-hide' function in full screen mode. It tries to auto-hide, but pops back up immediately, so it basically flashes on and off...on and off...on and off. Needless to say, this is a real buzzkill having to watch a show or movie with that always visible on screen, cycling on & off And no, my cursor is not hovering over the timeline/toolbar (which would normally suspend the auto-hide function).

                                                                    Waiting for an explanation, yet still a fan,

                                                                     Tim Dillenbeck

P.S. Have all my MoviesOnline  MG$ been lost, or can they be transferred to my VIPTV account? If so, what's the procedure to convert?

mrtimdillenbeck

The timeline/toolbar at the bottom of the screen has lost its 'auto-hide' function in full screen mode. It tries to auto-hide, but pops back up immediately, so it basically flashes on and off...on and off...on and off, at a 2 second cycle rate.  Needless to say, this is a real buzzkill having to watch a show or movie with that toolbar always visible on screen, cycling on & off And no, my cursor is not hovering over the timeline/toolbar (which would normally suspend the auto-hide function). Once again, this problem only occurs when you watch in 'full-screen' mode.

mrtimdillenbeck

Another rant from Tim concerning the new site design. Currently, he is trapped between bewilderment and outright anger...

   The last five or six days since the so-called "upgrade" have been, for me, the most frustrating, confusing, maddening days in recent memory. And the timing couldn't have been worse, happening as it did just as a slew of new series were being introduced and old ones were concluding their season run. I don't see how anyone can consider this redesign an improvement in any way. We now have reverted to a childish and confusing  skeleton of the UI we had come to love. The former site design was brilliantly functional, visually refined and easily navigated. You could log in and quickly check the left-hand update list, hit the 'more' button and have that essential list of 50 latest new episodes added. This allowed you to be offline for several days, return later and catch right up with the update schedule. Any question as to where I left off with watched episodes was as simple as a cut-and-paste of the show title into my viewing logs' search bar. I would happily have paid an additional fee for the utility of preserving my logs for much longer time periods, if not permanently. But at least I could download my history before it was wiped every few months. That  feature is but one of the many functional courtesies we have lost with this new design. Now the viewing logs are filling up with uselessly repeating entries every time I hit 'pause'. Because of that one glitch, my logs contain less than 30% useful entries As a result of all these new changes and omissions, I despair in the knowledge that each day I am falling further and further behind in maintaining any continuity whatsoever in my viewing schedule and record keeping. It's just hit and miss now, and I truly resent being forced into such futile, time-wasting chaos.  

   LBJEdward, I certainly hope the supposed improved compatibility with mobile devices  justifies the degree to which you have royally screwed up the user experience for all the rest of us. It would be a kindness to call your efforts anything other than amateur, childish and dysfunctional. It doesn't look good or perform well. The length of time needed to correct all that is wrong and buggy is going to be many long months, and that assumes you have a large team of experienced coders dedicated to the project. God forbid it's just one or two people working beyond their ability. What you have now is a product which is not yet ready even for beta testing. Yet here we all are, beta testing your unready experiment. The free movies and episodes are compensation for enduring all the inconvenience.

   Merging movies onto a TV site feels like a belt-tightening move to save some money. You might reconsider separate TV and movie sites and even a mobile platform with its own optimized site. Then VIPTV could revert to its former beautiful utility and familiar appearance. Consolidating all those services into one website feels cramped and compromised. Frankly, I'm more than a little put out by this experiment you have forced on us. You obviously lack the tools needed to produce anything near the intuitive utility of the old VIP site. You admitted, for example, the new code not being able to add something as simple as a 'forum' link button. If all this is to make stuff work better on a smart phone, I would consider your priorities  terribly misplaced.

   Judge for yourself: tally up the favorable comments versus the unfavorable ones in these forums. Or let us kick it up a notch and start a new, prominently displayed thread topic such as "New VIPTV Website Design--Better or Worse? Vote On Rollback To Old Design."

   I also have questions as to what the resolution is for shows on this new site. We used to have a choice of standard resolution or HD. That choice is now unavailable, and my initial impression is that I'm not watching HD anymore. Any comment?

   One or two final "Boy Do I Miss It" observations: for the first-time visitor landing on the home page, the exhaustive list of all your show titles at the bottom of the page was a great 'all-in-one-place' idea to convey the expansive library available. I also appreciated knowing what show title and episode #  was currently playing. Show tracking and record keeping was built in to the old interface. This new interface demands we create separate text documents in order to maintain any idea of where we are, where we were and what we have done. Intuitive navigation is now just a fond and fading memory.

   Once it was easy; now it is hard. Once it was beautiful; now it is not. Once it was fun; now… not so much. We mourn the passing of a cherished and familiar friend– the VIP interface. Pray for its return. Is what you have gained indeed worth the cost of what you have lost? We still love you, LBJEdward, but think carefully on what you have done. We are all holding our collective breath, waiting for this nightmare to end.

mrtimdillenbeck

I don't know how to cancel a post that was entered twice by mistake. So ignore this post, or consider it an apology. [ Last edited by mrtimdillenbeck at 10-26-2016 06:06 ]

mrtimdillenbeck

   It's been a full week now since the new site design was introduced, and despite a torrent of comments, nothing has been done to address the problems. Most users have been patient and super courteous with their suggestions. But polite respect has not resulted in any improvements. To distill the comments down to the most important issues, we have the following:

 

   1)  refer black background with white lettering

 

   2)  Return to the essential "recent updates" list with the "more" button leading to the "last 50 updated episodes" page

 

   3)  More extensive viewing logs with a "search" function and which don't bloat up with repeated entries every time you hit 'pause"

 

   4)  season/episode + title indicators when watching an episode to end the guessing game as to where you are in the season

 

   5)  Make up your mind; is this a Movie site or a TV site? Combining the two creates impossible-to-navigate clutter

 

   LBJedward, your obsession with smartphone users ignores the fact that most users are viewing on laptop, desktop or larger iPod-type devices. To achieve your smartphone objective, you have abandoned and betrayed the far greater number of users who, quite honestly, couldn’t care less about watching TV or movies on a telephone. If the computer vs smartphone incompatibility is so great, wouldn’t it make more sense to create a separate site for small-screen users rather than destroy the proven functionality for everyone else? This new format’s tools won’t even allow you to implement a “forum” button. The much loved, user friendly, fully functional ‘old’ VIPTV user interface is clearly superior to what we are now burdened with.

 

   If you had presented us with a site upgrade which improved performance and usability, we would all be cheering you on with glowing comments and rave reviews. As you may have noticed, this has not been the case. Having read all the postings since the changeover, I’ve yet to find any positive comments. None! Just an endless train of polite suggestions for improvements. But let’s face it, lbjEdward, the length of time it will take to re-code this new UI to implement all those improvements and approach the refined elegance of the old site…well, it may outlast the patience of your users. If I were a first-time visitor to the new site, I would probably feel frustrated confusion, lose interest quickly and surf on. Besides, the webpage looks like an amateur undertaking. Your vast library remains unseen, buried beneath the rubble of a chaotic, non-intuitive interface. But I suppose we can all take heart that it looks better on a telephone. Admit it– this is an experiment, and we, the users, remain the lab rats forced to bear the consequences.

 

   Why don’t you give us a concrete time estimate as to just how long we must wait for this UI to regain the features we loved but have lost? Be honest with us, please. Don’t just solicit suggestions, implement them. But always keep in mind the overwhelming advantages of a roll-back to the previous site format, the user-preferred ‘old’ VipTV. Down the road, once you actually have an “improved” (and de-bugged) product for us to use, then we can look at upgrading the system.

  

   Move us forward, Edward, not backwards.   

P.S. I have just discovered that you have/had a mobile site (m.viptv.net), at least as of 2015, while viptv.net was designated as 'the desktop site'. If this is true and you still have a separate mobile site, why did you trash the 'desktop' site? Or do you no longer have a mobile site, having merged the two with the intent of a single, universal platform (which didn't work out)? LBJEdward, your stated reason for this upgrade was Smartphone compatibility. If you do still have the mobile site, why not restrict the "upgrade" to that site only, leaving the desktop site untouched? If you don't still have the mobile site, why don't you get it back and restore viptv.net to the way it was?

   This is very confusing, and I wish to know the justification for screwing up our old favorite viptv.net, when a separate solution was available all the while. Someone, please, explain this to me. Am I missing something? 

mrtimdillenbeck

In my previous post, one of those hideously quivering yellow 'smilies' managed to attach itself, leech-like, to my text, covering the 'p' in 'prefer'.

How the devil do I pry it off using the 'edit my post' function?

mrtimdillenbeck

Quote:

 The new interface is not ugly really. No uglier than the old one. Neither were/are beautiful from a design POV. The old one was also full of UI mistakes, but you folks were used to them, so it wasn't obvious to you.
 Maintaining one site is far easier than maintaining multiple sites (1 for movies, 1 for tv shows, and 2 more for each to access on mobile). The new site works for all, it's just missing some features and implemented movies less than perfectly.

   I have no idea whether or not you have bothered to view the new site on your desktop machine, but I suspect you haven't. That you believe the new site is no uglier than the old one defies imagination. They are night and day. The old site was refined and had no obvious UI mistakes that I was aware of. Those UI mistakes you claim likely were only evident when using a mobile device, not a desktop, and you'll have to be far more specific if you expect me to buy that. Also hard to believe you find a glaring white background screaming at your eyes preferable to a black background. 

   What can not be argued is that a single platform is incapable of handling both a desktop and a mobile format. And while I agree that maintaining a single site is easier than handling multiples, I do not for a minute accept that justification when it means trashing the user experience for a substantial proportion of your audience. While you seem convinced of the plurality of mobile users, I think you might be overstating your case. In truth, only  LBJEdward is in a position to fact check either of us.

    But here is your most audacious of statements: "The new site works for all, it's just missing some features and implemented movies less than perfectly."  I don't know if we are even evaluating the same website when you come up with a whopper like that. Are you kidding me? Seriously? "Just missing some features"? There's an brazen understatement if ever I've heard one. Have you not bothered to read all the other posts in this thread? It's not just "missing some features", it's had its functional heart and soul ripped out, leaving a hollow, dysfunctional shell in its place. As far as "implemented movies less than perfectly", well, that's for sure. And what the hell are movies doing on a TV website, anyway (not that I don't appreciate access to them)? 

   So try this: read all the other posts and find me just one that is thankful for the changes- just one who doesn't sorely miss the old site's easy navigation, clearly presented new and archived content, and intuitive logging and searching abilities. While "one nation, two systems" might work for affairs of state, "one website, two formats" does not well serve VIPTV's user base. Take another look at your desktop, and post again when you get real. If you still cannot perceive the glaring differences 'tween the old and the new, then, sir, with all due respect, I'm not particularly interested in anything further you have to say on the matter.

     

mrtimdillenbeck

This will be a short interim post with the sole purpose of apologizing for my admittedly rude and uncivil earlier behavior. This forum is built on the concept of mutually supportive dialog, and my closing slings and arrows were truly inappropriate and ill-conceived. Whatever frustrations or grievances I was experiencing provide no rational excuse for my impolite words and dismissive attitude. Upon re-reading my own words, even I found them boorish and uncalled for. Whatever came over me, there is no one to blame but myself. I thus offer my sincere and humble apology and vow not to repeat such a breach of good manners to you or anyone else. Thank you, and we shall later continue our dialog as time allows. Oh, and per your suggestion, I've been reading up on "responsive design". Thank you again. -Tim

mrtimdillenbeck

Seems as though all the suggestions for site repair & improvement offered by members and moderators have just been gathering dust this past month. I and many others do still sorely miss our beloved previous viptv website. We long for the clear guidance of the 'recently updated' list with its magical 'more' button leading to the expanded 'list of 50'. Let us also sing the praises of the old 'viewer logs' pages which blessed us with the almighty "Search" tool. Lest we not forget the fond memory of show titles with season/episode # tags. Oh, my! Those were the days. Remember when you could watch a video and actually know what episode you were playing? And even choose Standard or HD playback. Dream on, dream on; all these earthly delights and more lie now behind us, just out of reach, in the past. And I guess that's where they're going to stay, because this current site experiment doesn't look like it's about to get any better anytime soon. Bit off a bit more than they could chew, I'd wager. We haven't seen improvement yet on any suggested bug fixes. Personally, Codebreaker's posted episode update lists are the only thing keeping me in touch with reality. Thank you, from all of us, for your Herculean efforts. I now am also keeping a manually updated viewing log document, since downloading the files is no longer available. All this record-keeping and separate website update checking work is taking its toil on my viewing habits. The old site had all that built-in convenience in one place. I now spend less than a third of the time now at VIPTV than I used to. It is simply a far less pleasant experience since the "upgrade". Inconvenient, incomplete, frustrating to navigate (many shows missing from the A to Z index), and just plain clunky. And that ultimately saddens me. I joined in September, 2007, and have been a loyal family member ever since. Now it's like an affair grown cold. Just a bright white, sparsely populated screen screaming at me from the darkness. Frankly, it's all I can do to keep from screaming back. Like Mick Jagger once said, “I want it paint-ed black.”

mrtimdillenbeck

I notice that most of the Mods and frequent posters are die-hards like me who have been with VIPTV since near the beginning in 2007. 10 years, a decade, is most definitely a serious dedication, and one which none of us regret. I believe we are all finally coming to grips with a serious fear of the future. VIPTV has become such a dear friend, a comforting presence we depend on daily. Speaking for myself, I am proud to have never paid for a cable subscription in my life. Here in the U.S., cable monopolies have redefined extortion and bleed customers dry. Thank god for viptv, which I first discovered while recovering at a nursing home after heart surgery back in 2007. I remember those Realplayer growing pains we all went through back then. Nowadays, I view those memories almost with a fond nostalgia. But we all prevailed, and VIPTV evolved to become what I consider to be one of the finest examples of what a TV site should aspire to become. The depth of program catalog and immediacy of episode updates, the ease of navigation, view logging and search functions, the aesthetics of the site design....the whole damn package...was comfortable and familiar. It is the loss of such a close companion which tears me apart. Coming to grips with its absence grieves me. No one single alternative service comes close to providing a viable substitute that offers the best curated material drawn from across so many varied sources (especially those channels which would otherwise cost an arm and a leg), not to mention the ability to actually request new favorites as they appear. Yes, given a sufficiently larger budget and the willingness to juggle subscriptions to a portfolio of diverse services, including a separate site-tracking service to stitch together and manage viewing logs--yes, you could make do. I honestly don't find that very appealing, or affordable. The last time I owned a real TV set was around the mid-1980's. I kept it wrapped up in a black plastic trash bag buried in a hole in my back yard. Once a week I dug it up, unwrapped it and set it up to watch Startrek: Next Generation. I did love how Captain Picard ran his ship! Afterwards, I unplugged everything, put the TV back in the bag, back in the hole, and shoveled dirt to rebury it until the next week. I can't remember if I ever unburied it after the series ended, but I do know that I haven't owned a TV since. The PC is my TV. In 2007, after more than 20 years "on pause", I rejoined the viewing public when I discovered VIPTV. I still reject any cable service; I do pay for monthly DSL Internet access. I also have a basic Netflix account. Along with VIPTV, I have been totally satisfied with fulfilling my entertainment TV habit. Oh, I just remembered that I do have a 'membership' at MovieOnline.cc, which I believe is/was a sister site to VIPTV, but for movies only, which is fine. It's another slightly ugly site design, but somewhat more functional than VIPTV's new incarnation. Which begs the question, if you already have a functioning movie site, why force movies onto your TV site. Is the Movieonline.cc look a preview of where VIPTV is headed? Are they going to close Movieonline? I'm not convinced it has the same owners as viptv, at least not according to Whois.com. Registered in Rangoon? Ok, ok, I've rambled on overly long by now. I've gotten my therapy session out of the way. So thank you all for humoring me this long. Hmm, forum posting as therapy session. And such a comfortable and stylish leather couch, to boot. One last thing. I should like to express my appreciation to the World at large for enduring America's embarrassing electoral spectacle these last 18 months. Chances are you are shaking your heads in bewildered amusement--and for good reason. For those who placed their bets on the triumph of decency and common sense...what can I say? Deja vu: twilight of the Weimar Republic? I don't know. Hold your breath, it only gets more amusing from here. Once again, my humble apology for America's poor form.

mrtimdillenbeck

["The fact he hasn't been on the forum since the 2-11 I guess our thoughts and suggestions are falling on death ears"]         I found your phrasing "....falling on death ears", accidental as it may have been, delightful nonetheless; and, if on purpose, terribly clever. [ Last edited by mrtimdillenbeck at 12-2-2016 11:14 ]